TAFE teacher qualifications

Erica Smith

University of Ballarat

My sources of evidence• Retail industry background• Casual TAFE teacher and course co-ordinator late 80s & early 90s• VET teacher training academic from 1993-2008 at Charles Sturt Uni, on

the largest VET teacher-training program in Australia.• Convenor then assistant convenor of AVTEC (Australian VET Teacher

Educators’ Colloquium) from 1999-2009.• State ITAB Director 2000-2002 involved in development review and

implementation of TPs.• On national Steering Committee for TAA Training Package 1999-2004.• President of AVETRA where much current concern is about VET

teacher qualifications• A series of research projects on competency-based training, VET

teacher training and teaching qualifications 1994-2008. • 2009 Service Skills Australia-funded project on workforce development

for Service Industries VET practitioners.

What’s been happening?• The introduction of competency-based training and the general

lifting of standards within industry has led to greater demands on VET teachers.

• Funding issues in VET as in all sectors of education have required all VET teachers to take on more responsibility and work harder.

• The encouragement of competition in VET and the growth of new markets has created diversification in the VET & the growth of new types of job both within the private VET sector and within TAFE.

• A focus on assessment and AQTF compliance has diverted attention from pedagogy, yet pedagogy is what most teachers, learners and employers are interested in. Many VET practitioners are pedagogy-free and give VET a bad name.

• The introduction of Cert IV teaching qualifications has provided a floor-but also a false ceiling. The industry (TAFE and other VET) has not responded appropriately to this. There will be a lack of educated managers in the near future.

The nature of VET practitionersFrom the Service Skills 2009 New Deal Project:• 75% of Service Skills RTOs said that over half their teachers

had the Cert IV as their highest teaching qualification, of whom one-fifth said that the Cert IV was the pre-2004 BSZ, not TAA. Commercial RTOs were the most likely to have a high proportion of teaching staff with university teaching qualifications.

• Discipline/industry quals were higher: only 35% of RTOs had 50% or more of staff with Cert III or IV as their highest discipline qualification. Variations among industry area.

• Excluding schools that were RTOs, only 6% of RTOs had over half their staff with a university degree in teaching; 16% of RTOs had over half their staff with a university degree in their discipline area.

• Thus teachers are much worse qualified in pedagogy than they are in their industry.

Four main issues

1. The inadequacy of the Certificate IV to provide the skills and knowledge that 21st century VET teachers need, even to start with – ANY Cert IV and THIS Cert IV. (eg no grasp of the nuances of CBT). The lack of appropriate people to teach the Cert IV - a vicious circle.

2. A sense of an anti-qualification and anti-university (and pro-RPL) culture within TAFE.

3. The failure of TAFE and other RTOs to demand better qualified teachers.

4. The low status of VET teaching as an occupation.